Patricia Cornwell – Portrait Of A Killer Jack The Ripper

Emily Dimmock had given venereal disease to so many men that the police had a long list of former clients who had good cause to do her in. She had been threatened numerous times in the past. Enraged men who had contracted the “disorder” harassed her and threatened to “out” or kill her. But nothing stopped her from continuing her trade, no matter how many men she infected. And besides, she remarked to her women friends, it was a man who gave her the disorder in the first place.

Emily was seen with two strangers the week before her murder. One was a man “who had a short leg, or hip trouble of some sort,” accord­ing to Robert Wood’s statement to the police. The other was a French­man described by a witness as approximately five foot nine, very dark, with a short cut beard, and dressed in a dark coat and striped trousers. He briefly came into the Rising Sun on the night of September 9th, leaned over and spoke to Emily, then left. In police reports and at the inquest, there is no reference to this man again, nor did there seem to be any in­terest in him.

Emily Dimmock was last seen alive at a Camden Town public house called the Eagle on the night of September 11th. Earlier in the evening she had been talking to Mrs. Stocks in the kitchen and said she had plans for the evening. Emily had received a postcard from a man who wanted to meet her at the Eagle, near the Camden Road Station. The postcard read, “Meet me at 8 o’clock at the Eagle tonight [Wednesday, Septem­ber 11th]” and was signed “Bertie,” which was Robert Wood’s nick­name. When she left the house that night in her long dustcoat, her hair in curling pins, she was “not dressed to go out.” She mentioned to ac­quaintances that she didn’t plan to stay at the Eagle long, wasn’t eager to go, and that was why she wasn’t properly dressed.

She still had the curling pins in her hair when she was murdered. Per­haps she was taking extra care to make sure she looked her best the next morning. Shaw’s mother was coming to visit from Northampton, and Emily had been cleaning, doing laundry, and getting the house in order. None of her former clients ever mentioned that Emily wore curling pins while giving them pleasure. It would seem a poor business tactic if one was hoping for a generous payment from a client. The curling pins could suggest that Emily wasn’t expecting the violent visitor who took her life. They might suggest she took her killer home with her and never removed the curling pins from her hair.

Her back bedroom on the ground floor was accessible by windows and sturdy cast-iron drainpipes a person could climb up. There is no mention in police reports that the windows were locked. Only the bed­room double door, the sitting room door, and the front door of the house were locked the next morning when Emily’s body was found. Her three keys to those doors were missing when police and Shaw searched the rooms. It is possible someone climbed into her bedroom while she was asleep, but I don’t think it’s likely.

When she set out from 29 St. Paul’s Road that Wednesday evening, she may not have intended to sell pleasure to anyone, but it could be that while she was on her way home with curling pins in her hair, she ran into a man. He said something to her.

“Where are you a goin my pretty little maid?” someone wrote in The Lizard guest book.

If Emily did have an encounter with her killer on her way home or if he was the man she met at the Eagle, he might have told her he didn’t mind her curling pins in the least. Will you let me come see you in your room? It is possible Sickert had noticed Emily Dimmock many times in the past, at train stations, or just walking about. The Rising Sun was right around the corner from his studios, not far from Maple Street, which he would later sketch as an empty back road late at night with two distant shadowy women lingering on the corner. Emily Dimmock may have no­ticed Walter Sickert, too. He was a familiar sight along Fitzroy Street, car­rying his canvases back and forth from one studio to another.

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